This site is the primary online presence for ACRL-Oregon, which serves a dual role as the Oregon chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) as well as the Academic Library Division of the Oregon Library Association (OLA).

Edited 3/22/2013: Due to a conflict with a major gun rights rally at the Capitol, OLA’s Legislative day has been moved to Monday, April 8th.

April 4th is closer than you think. *NOW* is the time to make appointments with your State Legislators for the Oregon Library Association’s Legislative Day, April 4, 2013. You will have a better chance of getting an appointment if you do it right away instead of waiting until just before Legislative Day.

You do need to make your own appointments with the Legislators. They prefer to make appointments with their own constituents so they need to hear directly from you. I have found that calling them is the best way to make an appointment. Usually they have very friendly staff who are very happy to set up the appointments. I usually follow up with an email to the Legislator thanking them for agreeing to meet with us and include a short sentence about some of our concerns, including the State Library budget, Ready-to-Read, county law libraries, and intellectual freedom. I don’t go into any detail in the email since we will do that during the appointment.

Legislative Day can be lots of fun and we will help you have some topics to discuss with your legislators. Nan Heim will be preparing a short issues brief that you may use. You will find that just talking about Ready-to-Read and/or other things about the library services you provide will fill the time well. You will seldom have more than 15 minutes with you. Legislators and they are great at talking themselves so the time goes fast.